To Hell and Back (Hellcat Series Book 4) (32 page)

“
Well, that explains why I couldn’t find the Dark Ones,” Kyle
muttered. He bent down and picked something up off the floor,
flicking it towards Gabi. She caught Nex by the hilt, feeling a
tiny kernel of relief at having the sword back in her hand. A tiny
alarm buzzing in the back of her brain made her wriggle past Fergus
to get to Julius and sink down onto the floor next to him. She
looked him over, then wordlessly sliced into one of the veins in
her left wrist and pressed it to his mouth. His eyes flew open, and
he tried to pull back, but his head was against rock, and she had
him cornered. His rapid capitulation spoke volumes. She gritted her
teeth against the sensations that coursed through her as he began
to feed. She looked around, suddenly realising that instead of the
usual group discussion that should be going on, there was silence.
Her eyes fell on Athena and Benedict. They were side by side, their
faces turned to each other, and both had horrified looks on their
faces.

“
What?” she demanded, not sure she felt up to the challenge of
what they were about to say.

“
They created a Travel Gate,” Athena whispered, disbelief in
her voice.

“
What’s a Travel Gate?” Gabi asked, but thought she already
knew the answer.

“
A gateway to another place.” Benedict confirmed Gabi’s
suspicions. “A sort of wormhole, only, as far as I know, they only
jump Magi to a different place, not a different time. So far, time
travel is beyond even the best of us. I hope,” he tacked on at the
end.

“
And…?” Gabi pressed. “That’s so bad, why?”

“
Travel Gates are terribly difficult magic to cast,” Benedict
explained, a sharp V furrowed his forehead. “It takes a certain
type of magic and a combination of powers and abilities. The fact
that they got it right is not good news for those of us going up
against them.”

“
What do you mean a certain type of magic?” Kyle
asked.

“
What the Castus Magi practice is referred to as Natural
Magic,” Benedict seemed impatient, but not with Kyle. “It requires
only drawing on one’s own talent or that given freely by another or
what is in the natural surroundings.”

“
Earth, wind, fire, water,” Athena put in.

“
Then there’s Blood Magic,” Benedict continued. “Blood is very
powerful and can be used in several ways to augment power or create
dark spells or deadly wards. The third kind fits somewhere between
the two, and it’s used to harness the darker natural powers,
storms, lightning, earthquakes, that kind of thing. It can also
help create things like Travel Gates.”

“
Sex Magic,” Athena whispered into the gloomy cave. “They’re
using Sex Magic.” Her face was a mask of distaste.

“
What else can Sex Magic do?” Gabi asked.

“
It’s not so much what Sex Magic can do, but what it can do
when combined with Blood Magic,” Benedict explained. “And that is
just about anything their devious little minds can think
of.”

Julius gently tugged Gabi’s arm from his mouth, glancing at it
to make sure it was healing. Then he stood, pulling her up with
him, and quickly assessed her from head to foot, assuring himself
she was more or less in one piece.

“
First things first,” he declared. “Let’s get out of
here.”

“
What do we do with the human?” Alexander asked. He was
surreptitiously standing guard, obviously distrustful of the
man.

“
Bring him,” Julius said. “We
can’t leave him down here. One of the Magi can erase his memory
when we get above ground.”

“
Uh, no, you can’t,” Benedict said. “He’s a Null.”

“
And by Null, you mean someone who nullifies
magic, I assume?” Gabi checked.

“
Ten points to the lady with the sword.” Benedict beamed at
her, but there was no real amusement in the smile.

“
Bring him anyway.” Gabi sighed. “We can figure out what to do
with him later.”

Getting back up the chute didn’t prove quite as problematic as
Gabi had expected. Alexander went up first, muttering something
under his breath about the smell of wet leather and dead possums.
Once he was at the top, he moved loose rocks into the path of the
running water to redirect the flow away from the tunnel. Once the
water slowed to a trickle, there was enough purchase on the rocks
for the others to shimmy up by bracing themselves with hands and
feet against the narrow sides and inching upwards. Only Henry was a
problem, mostly because he was shaking with cold and
shock.

The cavern above the water chute had been heavily rearranged,
some large sections of wall had collapsed, and a deep crack in the
rock had revealed a deep ravine between them and the side they
needed to be on. Vampire strength was a good thing sometimes, Gabi
reflected, as Fergus and Alexander lifted a flat piece of rock the
size of a car parking space and threw it into place over the
ravine. The next obstacle was a little bigger.

Several cubic feet of dirt and
rocks covered the tunnel leading to the room at the bottom of the
stairway. Kyle did a quick sweep of the cave system near them but
couldn’t detect any other way out. The commlink hadn’t worked since
they’d left the man-made section of the warehouse, so there was no
other option but to dig themselves out. Gabi was pretty sure that
Patrick would’ve done some investigating and, as long as the
warehouse was still standing, would be organising a
search-and-rescue team from the other side. They stripped out of
the heaviest of their protective gear and set to work, the Vampires
carting the larger rocks out of the way and the others using large
chips of rock to scoop dirt to either side. It was dirty, dusty,
thirsty work.

“
So, this whole underground thing was what?” Gabi asked into
the gloom, wiping stray hairs from her sweat-damp forehead. “An
elaborate trap?”

“
So it would seem,” Benedict agreed, from somewhere to her
left.

“
But who exactly was the trap laid for?” Kyle asked, then
grunted as he heaved a stalactite a foot thick out of his
way.

“
And how did they know they needed to lay a trap and then
evacuate?” Alexander asked; his words were polite enough, but his
tone carried accusation. “How did they know we were coming?” He was
off to Gabi’s right near the top of the mound of collapsed
cave.

“
Are you trying to imply something, Englishman?” Benedict
asked mildly, his face popping into Gabi’s view as he
straightened.

“
If the hat fits,” Alexander retorted. He’d also stopped work
and stared down at Benedict with narrowed eyes.

“
Down, boys,” Gabi snorted, flicking a handful of pebbles in
Alexander’s direction, “we have enough real enemies to
fight.”

“
What if he’s not as good as he says he is? Didn’t he assure
us they wouldn’t be able to detect his snooping?” Alexander
continued. “How do we even know for sure that he’s not in league
with them?”

“
Alexander.” Julius’s voice echoed through the cave like a
whip. “Enough. Benedict is not in league with the Dark Ones.”
Silence followed his words, and everyone busied themselves with
digging and clearing. But just as Gabi climbed back to the top of
the pile of rubble, Benedict spoke again.

“
There is something to what he said.” His voice was
thoughtful. “Perhaps this was somewhat my fault.”

“
What?” Athena demanded. “There’s no way—”

“
I didn’t take into account,” Benedict interrupted her, “that
one of them could be a natural Clairvoyant. It’s quite possible
that they foresaw our attack with enough time to take
countermeasures.”

“
Fuck.” Gabi sighed; she knew she was tired when her
vocabulary narrowed down to four-letter words. “There goes any
chance of a surprise attack.” Then she gave a subdued whoop and
plonked wearily onto the nearest solid-looking rock as she heard
sounds of digging and voices on the other side of the
rubble.

“
What worries me,” Kyle said, folding himself down onto the
rock next to her, “is that if they’re prepared to put this much
effort into stalling or diverting us, what exactly are they
preparing behind the scenes that they don’t want us to know
about?”

Gabi honestly didn’t want to think about it.

As the dirty, sweat-bedraggled group finally arrived upstairs,
chaos reigned on one side of the empty warehouse and calm on the
other. The Werewolves and Vampires who’d attacked them had been
separated; the Vampires were under guard by some of Julius’s men on
one side of the open space. None of them seem to have sustained
wounds serious enough to require attention, and once Julius
appeared, none of them gave any trouble either. Most were from
small Houses, a few were Nomades Solitarii. A Magus was moving
amongst them, checking to make sure all traces of the compulsion
spell were gone before they would be shipped off to the outskirts
of the City, with a strong warning to move off and stay
away.

The Werewolves were a different swarm of bees. Oh, the
Werewolves, Gabi sighed. It was easy to forget how volatile
Werewolves were as a rule when you hung out with Kyle and the
Werewolf Hunters. Gabi was in one of the partitioned-off areas of
the warehouse, a small barely furnished room with a coffee machine
and some basic coffee-making supplies. They looked none too fresh,
and Gabi assumed they’d been left by the previous tenants of the
building. She was desperate for coffee, but not
that
desperate, so she’d settled for
a glass of water from the tap instead. Mac and Henry were in the
room with her, Henry sitting hunched in a chair with a blanket
around his shoulders, uncharacteristically quiet. Mac joined her at
the glass panel looking out into the warehouse space
beyond.

“
The natives are restless,” Mac remarked dryly.

The Werewolf attackers were
mostly rogues, notoriously the most short-tempered of all
Werewolves. Being part of a Pack helped calm tempers. Most Pack
Weres learnt at least a modicum of self-control; accepting
leadership and protection from an Alpha brought with it certain
expectations. Those who couldn’t show any kind of restraint didn’t
last long in a Pack. The lucky ones made it as rogues; the rest an
unmarked grave. Kyle and Patrick hadn’t been able to calm the
rabble-rousers. Each time they talked one argument down, another
would start up somewhere else. There wasn’t enough room in the
warehouse to keep them all apart. Finally they’d chosen to call in
the cavalry; three of the five Alphas of the City were on their way
to help.

Gabi had forcibly calmed four
of the worst offenders, the ones actually in danger of harming
others, but in her already exhausted state, she couldn’t do much
more. After the fourth one, the world had begun to sway in front of
her. Mac had somehow slipped into the warehouse and slipped an arm
under her elbow, steering her towards the break room. She wasn’t
sure when he’d arrived, but guessed Julius had had something to do
with the intervention.

“
If only they were natives to the City,” she grumbled. “They’d
be much easier to control. The Alphas here have always been pretty
good, but the Alliance has taken the cooperation to a whole new
level.”

“
Really?” Mac asked, sounding surprised. “There are that many
Alphas here? And they manage to work together?”

Gabi smiled faintly. “It’s
taken a lot of work, mostly by Kyle,” she put heavy emphasis on the
word lot, “but yes, now that they’ve decided to make an effort, the
results have been quite amazing. The number of Werewolf-related
call-outs to the SMV is a tiny fraction of what it used to be.
Allowing Packs to intermingle has been interesting, to say the
least; it’s resulted in some changing of allegiances, but it’s been
kept amicable up to this point.”

“
They must be a force to be reckoned with now, though?” Mac
turned the statement into a question.

“
Mmm,” Gabi agreed. “They’ve proven their worth more than
once, and I think they will again. That seems to be the glue
holding it all together.”

“
Why don’t we go and find some coffee and some food?” Mac
suggested.

Gabi turned to him with narrow-eyed suspicion. “Did he tell
you to look after me?”

“
Which ‘he’ are you referring to?” Mac groused. “I got my
orders from at least three of them. And from Trish too. So just
behave and make me look good, aye?”

Gabi couldn’t hold back the
grin. “Coffee and food does sound pretty good,” she conceded. She
ached from head to toe. She hadn’t sustained any serious
injuries—no lacerations or burns or breaks, just the cut above her
eye, which had already scabbed over—but she was confident that by
morning her body would be more black, blue and purple than skin
tone, and every muscle would be screeching in protest at the
tiniest movement.

The failure of the operation was hitting her hard too. And she
wasn’t the only one feeling the effects. Athena was standing alone
at one of the outer doorways looking dejected and worried; she was
on her phone, Gabi could only surmise to someone on the Magi High
Council. That wouldn’t be an easy conversation.

“
Come on, Henry,” she told the human, picking up her jacket
and shrugging into it. “You’d better hang with us for now.” As the
three of them made their way towards an emergency exit door, she
sent Julius a mental kiss and saw him glance her way even as he
listened to something Patrick was telling him. One side of his
mouth twitched upward, and Gabi felt the ghostly touch of his lips
on hers in reply.